Turning Data Into Furniture Sales: Tip #10: Improved Media Buying Through Marketing Analytics

Furniture World News Desk on 11/21/2015

The High Cost of Media Buying

“Media buying” is the act of selecting and purchasing advertising space across any medium – typically television, radio, digital, billboard, and print.

And as you can probably guess, it doesn’t come cheap. That’s why smart marketers start with clean, complete, and accurate customer data. They know that quality data can drive smarter media buying decisions which can lead to a higher ROI from advertising. And as we all know too well, ad costs usually take up the lion’s share of a marketing budget. So beginning with the best possible data is your optimum bet for hitting your revenue goals.

Garbage into Gold

That’s why the saying, “garbage in, garbage out” applies here. But with updated, reliable data on your target customers, you can turn that “garbage” into gold, and save big money with more accurate media buying.

Four Steps to More Strategic Media Buying

Here are four critical steps to improve your media buying through marketing analytics.

1. Clean, clean, clean your data…yeah, it’s that important!

How clean is your data, really? Before you even think about merging contact information with other available demographics/pyschographics, you’ll want to ensure your database is absolutely up-to-date.

National Change of Address, or NCOA, is a US Postal Service database that cross-checks your contact information against change-of-address filings. Additionally, it standardizes each address and adds zip+4 code where missing. Coupled with a deceased suppression tool (which removes the deceased from your list), these scrubbing strategies are essential for ensuring that your data is accurate right from the start. By standardizing each address to USPS requirements, it will help you identify duplicate records in your database for merging or deletion.

2. Identify and add data variables

Age, income, children, and occupation are just a few variables that greatly enhance a customer’s profile. You’ll ultimately use this data to identify distinct groups within your customer base - i.e. your “best” customers – allowing you to target them specifically with your advertising dollars.

3. Assign missing values

In a perfect world of marketing analytics, every customer record would have data for every variable.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Imagine that Person A looks as if she belongs in Group A – however, everyone in Group A is aged 50-65, and we are missing data on Person A’s age. It would be inaccurate, and potentially brand damaging to assume that Person A fits the other criteria of Group A without having a good reason to do so.

And making assumptions can be a costly campaign mistake.

At Massa & Company, we use a scientific tool that deduces missing values to make profiles stronger. You can skip this step, but your results will be skewed – and your return will suffer as a result.

4. Use your data to create customer profiles.

You’ve cleaned your data, matched it with demographic variables, and filled in the missing blanks – now it’s time to create customer profiles.

As an example, a mid-sized retail chain might create profiles per store or per Designated Market Area (DMA), a breakdown of distinct regional media markets within the US.

Armed with these profiles, a media buyer can make better decisions with your advertising budget, identifying the ad space that best fits each customer.

The Results Pay For Themselves

We performed this process for a retail client who operates both conventional and clearance stores.

By cleaning their data, adding demographic information, and deducing missing values, we discovered that their clearance store customers had nearly identical characteristics to their non-clearance customers in the same market.

The media buyers adjusted accordingly, focusing on cheaper programming than they had previously.

The result? Major advertising savings, without a dip in revenue.

Your Media Investment Starts with Great Data

Marketing analytics is the proven methodology to help you make the most informed and strategic media buying decisions - and it all starts with clean, complete and accurate customer data. How would you describe your data?

Find out how to get more personal with your data in Massa & Company's  retail furniture presentation, “Breakthrough Results.” Click here for your FREE copy now!
The following post was written by Bonnie Massa, President at Massa & Company.